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	Giving To Dordt

By Ross Groen of the Sioux Center News (November 8, 2000 edition)

    With a new conference and only four returning players, The Dordt College womens basketball team faces an uphill battle this season. This will be the first season of womens basketball for the new Great Plains Athletic Conference. Last year the Lady Defenders competed in the South Dakota Iowa Conference.
    The season will be tough as the GPAC contains some very good programs.  Northwestern was picked to win the GPAC championship. The Red Raiders are also ranked No. 1 in the NAIA national poll. Dordt will face the Red Raiders twice this yearon November 18 as a non-conference game and thenon January 10 as part of the GPAC slate. We play Northwestern every year, said Rhoda, so I know how tough they are.
    Midland Lutheran is favored to come out second in the GPAC. Midland returns several starters off a team which went to the NAIA national tournament last year. Hastings is picked to finish third and Concordia fourth.
    Hastings got all of their players back and also got some good transfers so they will be good, commented Rhoda. We played Concordia last year and they beat us here at home by about 15 points and they also have most of their players back.
    The Lady Defenders were picked to finish ninth in the GPAC in the preseason poll. Rhoda said that the team intends to do better than that.
    We want to improve on our preseason ranking, said the coach. Its a new conference and its going to be a tough conference. We are a young team so I understand how coaches who do not know what kind of a team we have would put us in that position. I think that we have the potential to be better than that, but a lot of things have to come together. We
have a lot of young players just out of high school without much experience so the question will be how fast they come along.
    Dordt lost four starters off last years squad which finished with a record of 13-12.   Kelli Holwerda, Marlene Van Wingerden, Allison Miedema and Carla Geleynse all graduated. We lost a number of really good seniors last year, said Dordt coach Len Rhoda. Some of those women played for us for four years. So its going to be a bit of an adjustment.
 Geleynse was an honorable mention NAIA All-American and scored over 1,000 points in her career. She averaged 14.2 points per game last year. Dordt lost a lot of presence in the middle in Geleynse and Holwerda. Holwerda led the team with an average of 8.3 rebounds per game. Geleynse was close behind withseven rebounds per outing.  Van Wingerden and Miedema will be missed in the backcourt. Van Wingerden had 38 steals and Miedema racked up 66 assists. Gina Wietsema and Deb Driessen were also on last years team. They were both in two-year programs and are no longer at Dordt.  Senior Heather Broekhuis and junior Serena Van Beek are the two returning starters. Sophomores Krystal Smiens and Kristen Hoekstra saw action off the bench for the Lady Defenders. We just have four players coming back who dressed last year, said Rhoda. So it is a really young team. Broekhuis is a 57 point guard from Mountlake Terrace, Washington. She led the team with 97 assists last season and also averaged 8.8 points per game Heather has been our point guard for two years, said Rhoda. Even her freshman year she was playing a lot. Her first three years she shared responsibilities with Allison but now she is the one. Her experience and her ability are going to be crucial because our team is so young.  Van Beek, a 511 forward, scored 415 points last season. She paced the squad as a sophomore with an average of 16.6 points per game. Van Beek is a Hartley native and already possesses the Dordt record for career three-pointers with 89 and counting. She put up 68 successful triples last year alone.  Serena played a lot as a freshman and started last year, said Rhoda. She had an outstanding sophomore season an ended up as an all conference team selection.  Smiens, a six-footer who has seen time at both the forward and center, averaged 2.8 rebounds and 4.2 points per game off the bench during last years campaign. Smiens is from Chilliwack, British Columbia. Hoekstra plays both the guard and forward spots. The 59 sophomore is from Chesterfield, Virginia. Kristen didnt get a lot of playing time last season, said Rhoda. But she is one player who really improved a lot from the beginning of the season to the end. This years squad has a pair of sophomores who are new to the team. Susan Schaap is a 60 forward/center from Montague, California. Lori Panchot also plays both forward and center. The 510 is from Tucson, Arizona. She transferred to Dordt for the spring semester last year and practiced with the team but did not suit up for games.
    Eight freshmen are on the 14-member team. Jaque Scoby is a 5'8" guard from Morrill, Kansas. Janna Brink is a 5'9" guard from Holland, Michigan. Katie Hoekstra from Chesterfield, Virginia, is a 57 guard.  Orange Cityan Bridgette Dorhout is 59 and plays at both guard and forward. Dana Prins, 58, from Chandler, Minnesota, will play at the guard spot. Rachel Schutte is a 59 guard/forward from Ocheyedan. Kathy Van Grouw, a 511 player from Orange City, will work at the forward and center spots. Six-foot Alexis Smith from Castlewood, South Dakota, will play center.
    One of the teams goals is to win at least half of their games. We have a goal in that we want to play .500 basketball this year, said Rhoda. That is going to be a challenge for us.
    The Lady Defenders open their season in Roseville, Minnesota, at the Northwestern Tournament on Friday. Their first game will be a tough one against Jamestown, a team which is ranked at No. 7 in the NAIA. We drew a really tough team to start with, said Rhoda. They have four starters returning from a team that went to the nationals. They area very tough opponent.
 The conference schedule will open at home on November 29 with a gameagainst Mt. Marty.  In the SDIC we didnt play a conference game until after Christmas, said Rhoda. This year our conference schedule begins in November. Its the same for everyone, but obviously those teams with more experience are going to be in a little better shape going into conference games. We are already going to have three or four conference games in the first semester already. In the past the first semester was given to non-conference games.
    Rhoda said that it is too early to tell how the young team will perform this year.  We are going to have to see, said the coach. I think we have some good possibilities with some new players and I honestly dont think that I am really going to know until starting this weekend. We are looking forward to the season. There is uncertainty, but when we look at the players we have, then we can be optimistic. I think we have the ability, we just have to put it all together.